Setting Up A Classroom

It's that time of year when teachers get to head back into their classrooms to start setting up for a new year of learning. How do you go about making one room meet all of your needs? Choice Literacy posted an article about just this, "Room for Beliefs: Linking Classroom Design and What We Value."

Reggio Emilia schools consider the environment to be the teacher. Reggio is a choice-based education system for early education. This Design Share article, "Artistic Codes in Early Childhood Education" shows how the environment can help students construct meaningful learning. The information in this article can be applied to any classroom and to learners of all ages:

It embodies Reggio educators' belief that children are resourceful, curious, competent, imaginative, and have a desire to interact with and communicate with others (Rinaldi, 1998, p. 114). They believe that children can best create meaning and make sense of their world through living in complex, rich environments which support "complex, varied, sustained, and changing relationships between people, the world of experience, ideas and the many ways of expressing ideas" (Cadwell, p. 93) rather than from simplified lessons or learning environments. They also believe that children have a right to environments which support the development of their many languages (Reggio Children, 1996).  

Most art rooms have some kind of table set up for every day working. The teacher's desk is often hidden off in the corner since we're not really sit-at-the-desk kind of teachers. However, we need a demo space, a place to present art, a place for critique, a place for supplies, a place to let work dry, etc. With so many needs, it's important to set goals and then evaluate your space to make sure that your classroom is working with you to and not becoming an obstacle.